Multimedia networks include home entertainment networks that connect personal computing devices, digital video recorders (DVRs), and television sets to a centralized content server. Multimedia networks also include subscription multimedia services that provide digital video recording (DVR) capability through set top boxes.
In these conventional types of multimedia networks, the network server is best suited for maintaining the inventory as well as tracking the availability of recorded programs. This is because a server, e.g., of a commercial service, is the nerve center of the network, i.e., the “brain” that in many circumstances possesses the most reliable and authoritative information. Moreover, the central server typically stores or at least sends the multimedia content to the peripheral client nodes of the multimedia network.
In many multimedia networks, client nodes, such as local set top boxes and personal computers, increasingly have the capability to connect with removable storage devices. A removable storage device may consist of, for example, a solid-state flash drive or a hard drive mounted in a chassis. A firewire or a universal serial bus (USB) cable and jack is usually included with the removable storage device for plugging into a USB port of a set-top box or computing device. This makes it easy for a user to store recordings on the removable device and then unplug the device for portability. The removable storage device is portable to other systems that can alter the number of stored recordings or alter the recordings themselves, including their metadata.
A user may add recordings to a removable storage device without the changes being detected by a particular multimedia network. The user may also swap removable drives with others, etc. Thus, an inventory of recordings kept by a central server of a multimedia network is likely to be dated and cannot be trusted, when removable storage devices are in play. A way is needed for multimedia networks to track recordings and their metadata on removable storage devices.